We once accused some women of being witches, when they often were just crazy cat ladies. Our attitudes toward people change, but why do we still consider black cats to be bad luck? Chris Poole, who lives with the cats Coel and Marmalade, gives us the lowdown.

I’m glad to hear that there are places where black cats are considered good luck. My black cat Gogo is as sweet as a cat can be, but I’m keeping her inside during Halloween because you never know who will be passing by with all their superstitions intact. (via HuffPo)

Since Halloween is on a Saturday this year, many people wore Halloween
costumes to work, school, or parties yesterday. Lucky us! Some really
good ones have already been posted on the internet. See a roundup of them at Neatorama.

Dressing up as an entire group of people for Halloween comes dangerously close to mocking them. That goes double when the costume accoutrements have cultural and/or religious meaning. Any time you have to wonder if your Halloween costume is offensive, it most likely is. You can always ask someone ahead of time. (via Buzzfeed)

Chris Poole wanted to take pictures of his cats Cole and Marmalade in their Halloween costumes. Cole is Batcat and Marmalade is Supermarm. He even made an elaborate backdrop for the pictures. But cats don’t like to cooperate with anything a human comes up with. If you get them to look at the camera, they immediately jump at it. If you distract their attention from the camera, all you see is the rear of the cat. So it goes.

Cats do much better in video, where you can watch their movements ranging from graceful to disgraceful to hilarious. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Friday, October 30, 2015

The late Dr. Campbell was experimenting with vampire bat blood just before his death. Fellow doctor Beecher finds a bottle of pills among Dr. Campbell's effects and takes them home. Dr. Beecher's daughter accidentally substitutes the vampire blood pills for her father's migraine tablets. As a result, the kindly Dr. Beecher starts having blackouts from the pills, making him change into a bloodthirsty monster by night.

Homestar Runner is back with a Halloween special! Strongbad wants to open a haunted house with new and different features that instill a more modern sort of dread. Welcome to St. Cadaverstump’s totally not just an old furniture warehouse Mortuary! When it says “end,” it’s not the end. When the credits run, that’s not the end, either. (via Metafilter)

Babies learn by imitating others. Usually, we think of that as a baby imitating his parents. But when the family dogs begin to howl, that’s a learning experience for this 5-month-old baby. The baby boy has joined a long line of canines who learn from their elders. Will he grow up to be a werewolf? Only time will tell. (via reddit)

The folks at Bad Lip Reading had a lot of fun with the Democratic presidential candidates at their debate. Their lips are moving, but what’s coming out is pure nonsense. Stay to the end to catch Bernie Sanders reciting poetry! (via Neatorama)

Witches as fictional characters are a lot of fun. But in the past, being accused of witchcraft was serious, and usually tragic, business. Here are the stories of six women who were regarded as witches at one time or another, in an article I wrote for mental_floss.

The film is a sequel to Hammer's original Dracula (USA: Horror of Dracula) (1958), though the vampires possess abilities denied to vampires in the previous film, much like those in the original novel. Alternative working titles were Dracula 2 and Disciple Of Dracula. Dracula does not appear in the film (Christopher Lee would reprise his role in the 1966 Dracula: Prince of Darkness) and is mentioned only twice, once in the prologue, once by Van Helsing.

Biisuke is a little red ball who lives with his two brothers, Biita and Biigoro, who are also small balls. When two of them are kidnapped, Biisuke has to go on a grand quest to save them. This is a tale tale told through a Rube Goldberg contraption, which is impressive even without the story (subtitled in English) and the cute little song that goes with it. (via The Kid Should See This)

A video from The Royal Institution explains in a very calm, subdued, British way what happens when you burn iron oxide and aluminum powder inside a pumpkin. The visual effects are quite impressive. It’s also quite dangerous, so don’t try this at home. Please. Thermite is nothing to fool around with. (via The Daily Dot)

You could say the costume is, um, daffy. What makes the video is the infectious laughter. Nibbles is quite a trooper. He’ll put up with anything for his beloved, if somewhat wacky, family. (via Tastefully Offensive)

How would you design a chain reaction that takes six weeks to complete? Bob Partington of Field Day did it. My question was how they expect us to sit through the video! But that’s easy, because parts of it are time-lapse, with a clock in the corner to indicate which parts, and how much time is sped up. Part of this involves filling a trough with enough molasses to float a boat. Slowly. A tortoise has to carry the ball for a while. Popsicles have to melt. And the last “slowness” gimmick is a real doozy. Partington has another video in which he explains the design process. (via Viral Viral Videos)

The New Conformity is a trio of jugglers who perform with Cause & Effect Circus. They start off with synchronized juggling, which is nice to see. Then they start juggling each others’ balls. A nicer term for that would be tandem juggling. They also do contact juggling, ball balancing, a hand dance, and even a Three Stooges-type routine. After all that, they just start showing off. (via Digg)

Once upon a time, you didn’t think about a movie until it reached your local theater. And that was a good thing, because it did not get to small towns until months after the official release. Then as theaters expanded, you’d see trailers on TV a month before the movie appeared, and that was the first you heard of it. Now, we get every scrap of film development on the internet years ahead of time. And for a fan, it’s not easy to wait for the finished product. It applies to any number of popular film franchises. Sadly, it also applies to TV shows, video games, and books. We know too much about them before we ever get a chance to try them out. (via Tastefully Offensive)

The Captain really likes his tea. Sometimes that causes problems on the Enterprise. This video is actually called "Tea with Jean-Luc, episode 1: Ménage à Tea,” which tells us there will be more to come concerning Picard’s relationship with tea.

These killer snails are no masks, but they are certainly more than makeup. The Swedish duo called ellimacs sfx, which is makeup artist Ellinor Rosander and photographer Macs Moser, go through all the steps of making a pretty model look disgusting for Halloween. The results are truly disturbing. But the process of making it can be disturbing, too, because this is not something you’d just throw together at the last minute. These guys have some skills! You’ll also find some simpler Halloween makeup tutorials in a collection at The Daily Dot.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Attack of the Crab Monsters concerns a second scientific expedition that is sent to a remote Pacific island to discover what happened to the scientists of the first. Unknown to them when they arrive, the island is inhabited by a mating pair of two radiation-mutated intelligent giant crabs that consumed the first expedition. The giants are also slowly undermining the geology of the island, causing it to fall away, piece-by-piece, into the ocean.

Marky Mark was a shark in the last ADHD cartoon featuring the movie star. Now he’s a werewolf for Halloween! Mark Werewahlfberg introduces us to all the iconic characters of the season, with plenty of almost-puns that you’ll have to supply the punchline for yourself. (via Tastefully Offensive)

How do desert animals stand walking on that hot sand? This is how. I’m sure you’ve done this dance a time or two on concrete or when you notice your shoes melting. or with your hands when you are carrying some foot that’s just a bit too hot. If only we had musical accompaniment during those times!

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Scared to Death from 1947 is Bela Lugosi’s only color film. From Wikipedia:

The film opens with the disclosure by morgue examiners that a beautiful woman has literally died of fright. The plot reveals how she reached the fatal stage of terror.

The woman is married to the son of a doctor, the proprietor of a private sanatorium, where she is under unwilling treatment. Both the son and the doctor indicate they want the marriage dissolved. Arriving at the scene is a mysterious personage identified as the doctor's cousin who formerly was a stage magician in Europe. He is accompanied by a threatening dwarf.

There are Nazis involved, too. the movie was based on a one-act play, which was based on a 1933 murder case.

I enjoyed this compilation of pets who perform remarkable tricks. Watch a hamster practice his backflips! Watch a bird play basketball! Watch a dog catch flying potato peelings! And best of all- the cat who rolls the toilet paper back up! (via Tastefully Offensive)

This video of a short footrace looks a little strange. They take strangely small steps, and they keep looking over their shoulders. It’s just weird.

See, this is a backwards foot race. Everyone is running backwards! But the video has been reversed, so that they start at the finish line and run to the starting line. Meanwhile, the audio is still run in the right direction. Got all that? (via Digg)

Oakley was an orphaned owlet that was taken in by Eagle Valley Raptor Center. For comfort, Oakley got a plush owl buddy who sang “The Monster Mash.” Here he sings and dances along with the mechanical toy. Oakley was later taught to hunt prey and was released into the wild. (via Metafilter)

Saturday, October 24, 2015

This is so good, why don’t you play it while you’re doing something else in another window, like checking email or playing a game. It will make the whole next seventeen minutes so much more pleasant. The New York Philharmonic, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, performing George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

The best part of the official trailer for The Force Awakens is the part where Han Solo assures Finn and Rey that the stories they’ve heard are true. What must he be thinking when he says that?

Nick Skywalk remixed the trailer with clips from other films to make “those stories about what happened” real, to Solo and to us, which just makes looking forward to the new movie more exciting. This is really well done. (via Uproxx)

The idea behind “trick or treat” is the implied threat of playing tricks on a homeowner if the treats aren’t given. That’s extortion. But Nana the border collie has a better technique, the “trick for treat”! She goes to a neighbor in her ladybug costume and performs her best tricks to earn treats. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Quick- think of all the movies you know that have important worms. Those will probably be the movies included in this supercut from Atlas Obscura. They start out small and cute, but the cuteness goes away pretty quickly. What’s left is an ever-growing menace of slithery, hungry, enormous cinematic worms!

Kevin and Amber Judd of Creative Lighting Displays have once again set up a friend’s house to entertain passers-by for Halloween This year’s show features the songs “Ghostbusters,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” “This is Halloween,” and Bobby Pickett’s “Monster Mash.” Thousands of color-changing LED lights are accompanied by strobe lights, flood lights, and two Matrix boards, as well as tombstones and hand-carved pumpkins. My favorite new feature is the flames in the windows. If you can get to Riverside, California, here are the particulars for the show. (via HuffPo)